Marriage for papers?!?!?!

I don't know if it's just me or if more and more people are getting married for their papers or what, but in the last year I know of 5 people that have gotten married to either get their papers or to help someone else get their papers.

WTF are they thinking?

Anyone else know someone doing this, or that has done this?

What are the penalties for something like this...? If I'm not mistaken, isn't it a federal offense or something?

It's a shame what people are doing to this country...

Now don't get me wrong, if you love the person you are with and get married and they get their papers or whatnot, that's all well and good, but for money or just to "help someone out"...that's just fucked up...

My friend is from Turkey. He's muslim. In his culture, he can go out and find a woman, or one can be given to him in an arrangment. Well, he opted to do both - finding this girl and then having his dad go and talk to her dad to arrange a marriage.

Turns out she lives in Macedonia. Well, the families got together, and they had his wedding out there in Macedonia. They were together out there for a few months, and decided to move back to the US (Where he owns a house).

For him, the process is a killer. He has to go through 19 months of waiting periods, $500 application fees everywhere he turns, he has to prove that he has years of steady employment, at least one paid educational grant or completed degree in schooling, and at the end of it, he has to demonstrate $20,000 in bank holdings, or over $200,000 in assets, and he has to have those for a specific amount of time within that 19 months or she is rejected.

All in all, he's working his ass off to settle these requirements to get his wife over here. So getting married "for papers" is only the beginning of the process.

I think my mom got her citizenship before her and my dad got married. She came from Chile, S.A. I know a guy from Austria that hasn't been able to get a real job, can't get a driver's license, nothing. He's been in the Naturalization program, and they keep giving him the run-around. He got married to an American girl, and just now are they starting to help him out.

That's something I don't get. When people try to do things the right way, the gov't screws you over. So that's why we have so many Mexican immigrants here. And now we have to carry uninsured driver insurance for that reason.

And the big run around are all these 100's of agencies that have their finger in the fucking dip trying to get their shit together. It used to be a single agency: the INS that would help you get in. They would point you towards language classes, homes, jobs, everything you needed. But this is also the Ellis Island days of immigration. There, you couldn't even leave the island unless your ducks were in a row.

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He has to go through 19 months of waiting periods, $500 application fees everywhere he turns, he has to prove that he has years of steady employment, at least one paid educational grant or completed degree in schooling, and at the end of it, he has to demonstrate $20,000 in bank holdings, or over $200,000 in assets, and he has to have those for a specific amount of time within that 19 months or she is rejected.

Oh I'm pretty sure that it's who you know at some point. Because these fuckin albanians and haitians seem to get here with $10 and no job. They are handed fake leather jackets at the border, a food licence and the keys to a taxi with $20,000 in grants in the trunk just for being a foreigner.

But when you follow the rules, yeah - it's hard as hell to do it properly.